


(Do You Feel Like A) Young God

by Atlas_M_33



Series: Spelled Out in Bones [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Divination, Falling In Love, Fluff, Friendship, Light Angst, M/M, Magical Realism, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Sparring
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-02 14:45:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16789036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atlas_M_33/pseuds/Atlas_M_33
Summary: Shiro is an aspiring astronaut with magic flowing through his veins and no one to share it with.Keith is the the fortune-telling fighter pilot he falls in love with.(Their lives only get stranger from there.)“Why did you come to the Garrison?”“Why else?  I was bored, I was broke, and I had nowhere else to go.” The floodlights on the roof of the Garrison shouldn’t be even vaguely romantic, but they wash over Keith anyway, transforming him into something ephemeral and soft. Shiro’s gut swoops, and there’s no coming back from this, is there?“And,” Keith tips his head around to look back at Shiro with a wicked grin on his face, “The stars were calling.”





	(Do You Feel Like A) Young God

**Author's Note:**

> This was a baby prompt that grew a plot and turned into a monster. I’m so sorry.
> 
> Prompt: Keith and Shiro possess very strong magic. Shiro’s is geared towards fighting while Keith’s runs more towards divination.
> 
> My Beta reader is the lovely Nasigoreng, to whom I owe my eternal gratitude for taking this on with little to no warning in the midst of Finals Season. You rock!!

The best day of Shiro’s life starts when Matt nails him square in the face with a dirty sock at six in the morning.

“Rise and shine bitch!” Shiro sits bolt upright, magic swelling under his skin as he tries to figure out what’s going on. A quick scan of the room reveals the commotion is just his roommate scrambling to get dressed without spilling the coffee he’s holding. Shiro flops backwards, pulling his sheets back over his face and groaning. He attempts to shove his magic back down so it doesn’t trigger his fight response before he’s awake enough to stop himself from decking Matt.

“Nope! Nope nope nope! I said get up!” There’s a noise somewhere to his left before something heavy lands on his chest.

“What the fuck Matt!” The covers are ripped off of his head and sure enough, his terrible best friend is kneeling over him, pulling the sheets away. “What is your problem?” Matt shuffles backwards as quickly as he can, which still isn’t fast enough to stop Shiro from grabbing his ankle and tripping him off the bed.

“It’s Freshie day! The caf is gonna be packed with a bunch of newbies and we won’t make it in time to get anything good if you don’t get your massive ass moving right now Shirogane!” The answer comes from under the bed where Matt is hanging from Shiro’s grip, apparently unbothered by the fact that he’s upside down at the moment. Shiro rolls his eyes and lets go, smiling at Matt’s grunt as he hits the ground.

“Why didn’t you just say that?” He sweeps back the sheets that still cover his legs, stepping over the crumpled pile of engineer on the floor to get to his closet, nimbly avoiding all of Matt’s attempts to grab his ankles and trip him up in revenge. He grabs the uniform he set out last night and pulls it on, stepping into his boots and casually kicking out at Matt’s knee to send him tumbling back to the floor when he tries to stand up. He heads towards the door, barely able to speak through his grin when he calls back to the heap on the floor where Matt appears to have given up on becoming vertical any time soon. “Hurry up Matt! We’re gonna be late!”

The door closes behind him, but does nothing to muffle the “Shiro, you son of a bitch!” that Matt tosses out after him. He stands next to the door, waiting for his disaster zone of a best friend to come stumbling out into the hall. When he finally does Matt shoots him a look, brushing his hair down and settling his glasses back on his face. “Asshole.”

“You love me!”

“God knows why.” It’s early enough that the hallway is mostly clear, their only company a few other upperclassmen with the same idea to scoop up the good breakfast early before the new recruits can show up.

It turns out to be the right choice. Thanks to the early hour they get through the line quickly and then head for their usual table in the corner closest to the door. Shiro sets his tray down, sitting with his back to the wall like he always does as Matt settles down across from him. He opens his mouth, ready to pester Matt about the paper he hasn’t started yet as revenge for the wake up call he received when he feels it, and his mouth clicks shut audibly. He searches the room frantically, trying to identify the source, and his surprise is obvious enough that Matt picks up on it instantly. “What’s wrong?”

Shiro doesn’t answer though, because at that moment he lays his eyes upon the single most beautiful person he’s ever seen in his life and the magic in his gut swells up so quickly it feels like taking a suckerpunch to the chest.

A few tables away the boy with the gorgeously messy hair jerks his head up, locking stares with Shiro instantly, and his eyes are burning like starfire. Shiro has to stop himself from gasping, and it’s only then that he remembers to breathe. He’s never felt anything like this before, has never experienced the slow seep of someone else’s magic from across the room, has never felt his own magic respond in kind, curling joyously in greeting, and really, there’s a good reason for that.

Here’s the thing about magic that your family doesn’t tell you unless you have a Gift for it: It’s finicky. It’s bitchy and it’s territorial and it doesn’t play well with others. There have been several times that Shiro or one of his relatives has had to opt out of a family get together just to avoid making anyone sick from spending too long overlapping. But this kid? His magic isn’t grating against Shiro like his aunt’s does, and it isn’t sticking to him and weighing him down like his brother’s. Instead it feels like it’s wrapping around him, pulling him down the hall and out the door and up into the stars.

“Matt, who is that?”

Matt turns around to see who he’s looking at and the concerned look on his face fades as he snorts, putting his attention back on the article he’s been working through. “You sure do know how to pick ‘em, Shirogane. That’s Keith Kogane. He’s the one that trashed your entrance score.” Behind Matt the kid- Keith- twitches, and his face pales. He hunches down into his seat, eyes darting to the door and looking for all the world like he’s expecting Shiro to attack him.

“Hmm.” He lets a smile slip onto his face and gently pokes his magic in Keith’s direction. The effect is immediate: his shoulders relax and he no longer looks quite so much like he’s about to fling himself out the window if Shiro so much as blinks in his direction. The unfamiliar magic pokes back hesitantly, and that’s all Shiro needs to make up his mind. “Well, it can’t hurt to introduce ourselves then!” He stands from the table, picking up his tray and leaving Matt gaping at him from behind.

“What? Shiro?” Shiro looks back over his shoulder and jerks his head at his best friend, telling him to get a move on without words.

“Come on. I’ve got a good feeling about this.” He comes to a stop across from Keith, who pretends that he isn’t looking up at him through shaggy bangs that are just long enough to flirt with regulations. Shiro grins again, the one he uses to convince professors to give him an extra day to turn in the paper. “Hi.”

At the sound of his voice Keith straightens up, peering at him intently with sharp eyes. “Hi.”

For a moment it feels like everything else in the room fades away, the universe narrowing down to the two of them orbiting each other like nothing else exists or matters.

For a moment, just a moment, it feels like nothing but Magic. And then-

“Are you gonna sit down Shiro? Or are you just gonna keep staring at the kid?”

And then the world is falling back into place and Takashi Shirogane is watching Matthew Holt settle down at the table with a huff, tossing his article next to his tray and reaching out a hand for Keith to shake. “I’m Matt. This human disaster is Shiro. Your name is Keith, and I want to know how you passed the first section of the entrance sim without doing the lunar slingshot.”

Keith blinks at the onslaught of information, but nonetheless reaches out to shake the hand being offered to him. “I don’t really know. Just had a feeling, I guess.” He looks back to Shiro, raising an eyebrow, and that’s when he realizes he’s still standing, caught in the invisible flow of energy that’s swirling around them. He jerks a little in surprise, clunking his tray down and falling into his seat more than sitting in it. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Matt shaking his head, but all his focus is still latched onto the boy across from him. Distantly, he can hear Matt muttering to himself under his breath.

“This is gonna be interesting.” Shiro twitches, digging an elbow into Matt’s ribs, and the ensuing squawk has Keith stifling a laugh.

God, does he hope so.

It’s natural, the way it all falls together in the next few weeks. They start hanging out right away, sometimes all three of them, sometimes just Shiro and Keith as Matt crams in extra time in the robotics lab with his dad. Their time spent together only increases when Keith’s competence at almost everything he puts his mind to gets noticed, and Matt manages to get him moved up a flight class and added as their third crew mate. Shiro learns all about Keith, that he’s here on a scholarship because of his flight scores, that he can handle a knife like he was born for it, that he can write with both hands and take two different sets of notes at the same time, something that drives Matt up a wall.

But most importantly to Shiro, he learns what Keith’s magic does and finally gets to share his own with someone else.

“Isn’t that cheating?”  
  
Keith flips another card, and Shiro catches a flash of bright purple eyes through the bangs hanging in his face as Keith shoots him a look. “Is it cheating when you fight someone during class knowing that they could never beat you just because of who you are?”  
  
“No. At least, I don’t think so? It’s just a part of me. I know how to fight.”  
  
“Then no, because prophecy is a part of me. Besides,” Keith looks down at the three tarot cards spread across the table in front of him and smiles before scooping them up and sliding them back into his deck. “I don’t know the exact order of the future, just the general shape of it.” He stands, tucking his cards away into the waistband of his uniform pants. “Yours is going great places Shiro. And I’m going to go finish Iverson’s essay.”  
  
As he leaves Shiro can’t resist asking his last question. “And what about yours? Where does your future go?”  
  
Keith pauses with one hand on the door frame. “That’s the downside of fortune telling Shiro. No one knows their own.” His hand falls to his side, and then he’s gone, leaving nothing behind but the faint smell of desert air.

Keith waits until he gets back to his room to pull the cards back out of the pile and look them over again. Death, the Chariot and the Sun are fanned out between his fingers, and really, Keith should have seen this coming.

The Chariot is no surprise, because even with Keith hot on the heels of most of the records he’s set, Shiro is still the Garrison’s poster boy. He still radiates excellence in a way that tells Keith there will be plenty of victory in his future.

The Sun is also not unexpected. Shiro is a happy person, always grinning and laughing. He’s content with life, and it shows in a way that sets Keith at ease around him no matter how irritated he is beforehand.

It’s Death that had caught him off guard. Logically, he knows that it rarely heralds an actual death. Logically, Keith knows that his father drawing the card at the festival that ended only a week before their house caught fire was an anomaly, but looking at it still makes his stomach turn. He slumps down, perched on the foot of his bed, and the meaning flashes through his mind: _change and new beginnings_. A desert breeze sweeps in through the open window and something in it whispers to the magic twisting in his core until it quiets down and settles in.

Keith slips the cards back into the deck and tries not to think about flames and ash and smoke in the night.

  
“How did you find out?” Keith’s sitting at the table, bowl set out in front of him as he tries to get the hang of scrying. Shiro raises an eyebrow, and Keith shoots him a look. “About the magic. How did you find out?”

He scratches the back of his head. “I was fifteen and I kept spacing out in the middle of sparring. My grandma pulled me aside and helped me figure it out.” He leans forward, peering down at the water that displays a random expanse of canyon rather than his reflection. “What about you?”

Keith’s answering chuckle is dust storm dry, and when he looks up at Shiro there’s mirth in his eyes. “Well, my Dad used to tell fortunes at festivals for extra cash. But I really got started,” He pauses, and Keith isn’t usually one for drama so Shiro leans forward eagerly. “When I stole a tarot deck off a dead guy the day I turned eleven.”

Shiro‘s laugh echoes down the hall.

It’s rare for their schedules to line up and give them a night to jump on Keith’s bike and drive out to town, but when it does happen they always end up in the same place: the back corner booth of Tom’s Diner. It’s partly for the fries, partly for the burgers but mostly so that they can talk freely about the magic that hums between them without running the risk of being grounded for psych evals. Shiro digs his fry into the top of his shake and focuses back on the topic at hand. “Do you know if there’s anyone else at the Garrison?”

“Anyone else?” Keith raises a single eyebrow, and something in Shiro’s stomach flips over.

He swallows and raises his other hand to wiggle his fingers at Keith childishly. “Like us.”

Keith leans back in his seat looking thoughtful, but his answer comes readily. “Yeah actually. There’s no one else near as powerful as us, but there are a few people who smell like magic. There’s the girl that sits next to you in physics, that gate guard with the southern accent,” His eyes shift upwards as he gnaws on his lip, probably trying to recall all the faint wisps of Other he’s sensed lately. “that new engineer, the one that threw up in the simm last week?” Shiro nods in recognition and Keith carries on. “The pilot that was in there with him too, but that could’ve been overflow.” He blinks then, slowly lowering the fry in his hand. “Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m pretty sure Matt does.”

Shiro snorts, pulling his milkshake closer. “Matt smells like magic? His only power is that Iverson hasn’t strangled him yet.”

Keith squints and waves his fry at Shiro in a gesture that might be intimidating if he had literally anything else in his hand. “Well he does. But only some of it’s his. I think.”

“What do you mean?” Shiro can feel his eyebrows moving upwards, and quickly raises his hands in submission when Keith narrows his eyes again. “I’m not doubting you!”

“Whatever.” He finally gives up his threat and shoves the fry in his mouth. “I mean that there’s got to be someone else in his house that’s magic touched too. It’s in the air every time he comes back from family weekends. It’s like,” He smacks his lips and wrinkles his nose like just talking about it has pulled the taste back into his mouth. “Chlorophyll.”

“Chlorophyll? Really?”

“I don’t know!” He looks up at the ceiling, rolling the words around in his mouth before he spits them out. “It just tastes like growing things. Like going outside right after someone mows the lawn.” Shiro nods, shoving the last few fries on his tray into his mouth and making a grab for the pile Keith’s been hoarding. “Hey! Those are mine!”

“Too slow!”

“Why did you come to the Garrison?”

Keith rolls his head back, and with the way he’s leaned back on his elbows with one leg kicked up over the other, he’s dripping nonchalance so heavily Shiro can almost taste it in the air. “Why else? I was bored, I was broke, and I had nowhere else to go.”

The massive yellow floodlights on the roof of the Garrison shouldn’t be even vaguely romantic, but they wash over Keith anyway, transforming him into something ephemeral and soft. Shiro’s gut swoops, and there’s no coming back from this, is there?

“And,” Keith pulls his elbows out from under himself and lays flat on the concrete, tipping his head around to look back at Shiro with a wicked grin on his face. “The stars were calling.” Shiro can only sit there trying to catch his breath, knowing deep down in his soul that for the rest of his life he’ll never see anything more beautiful than Keith Kogane in this moment.

It sets a precedent for the rest of their interactions.

“Why are we doing this again?” Keith is standing at the edge of the mat wearing tight yoga clothes that Shiro can’t look directly at without blushing. He’s got his hands wrapped and his hair up and if Shiro didn’t know him well enough to hear the amusement in his voice he’d be scared for his life, because with the way his arms are crossed and his foot is tapping he is simultaneously beautiful and deadly.

Shiro shakes his head and tries to refocus on something that isn’t the exposed slope of Keith’s neck into his shoulder. “I want you to be able to protect yourself.” He sets his feet shoulder width apart and spreads his hands, wiggling his eyebrows in a way that he knows looks ridiculous but that also makes Keith giggle like a little kid. “Now hit me.”

Keith sighs and shakes his head, but he’s still grinning like a madman.“Shiro. I really don’t think that-”

“I’m serious! Hit me!” He leans forward into Keith’s space, shimmying his shoulders around and egging Keith on. “Come oooon… I know you want to.”

Keith rolls his eyes, but uncrosses his arms and shakes out his hands to loosen them up. “Fine.”

It happens so fast that Shiro doesn’t even realize Keith’s moved until there’s a fist headed straight for his face. He barely ducks in time to avoid a broken nose and right after that he has to worry about the knee that’s headed straight for his chest. There’s a shift in the magic curling in his stomach that has everything dropping into slow motion, and Shiro knows with something deeper than instinct what Keith’s next move will be. He drops out of the hold that Keith is about to wrap him in and darts back, pulling himself back into his body and letting the world come back to real time.

Keith is standing in the same place, out of breath from his rapid surge into motion but still smiling. “Bet you didn’t see that coming.” There’s a manic light in his eyes and his fingers are twitching minutely, the same way they do when he’s gone too long without dealing a fortune or casting his runes.

For a moment Shiro is caught off guard. He knows, of course, that Keith has always let his magic rest closer to the surface than most usually do, but it always manages to surprise him anyway. His heart thrums in his chest, and his own magic curls giddily throughout his form, rushing about and chattering something at him that roughly translates to _Play?_ He pushes it back for a moment and stutters out a question. “How did you do that?”

Keith bounces up and down on his toes, grinning like a lunatic the whole time. “I was an orphan Shiro. I know how to throw a punch.”

He can feel a grin that matches Keith’s sliding across his face as he settles back into his stance. “Okay then, hotshot. Let’s see what else you got.”

  
When Shiro unlocks his apartment the first thing he notices is the familiar sound of runes tumbling across a hard surface. He drops his bag by the door, sticking his head into the living room where, sure enough, Keith is sitting cross legged on the floor looking over the spread of the wooden runes he’s just cast across the coffee table. He hasn’t noticed Shiro yet, too busy mumbling to himself. Shiro steps into the room far enough to lean on the door frame, watching silently for a moment before speaking. “What are you looking for?”  
  
“I’m trying to see if there’s gonna be another dust storm next week. The shack’s back window needs fixing but if the weather holds out then I have time.”  
  
Shiro straightens from his spot, crossing the space between the door and the table to settle down across from Keith, resting an elbow on the table and placing his face in his palm, looking over the runestones. “I’ll never understand how you do this.”

Keith chuckles, collecting his pieces to cast another lot. “What’s there to understand? It’s all about intent.”

“Well, first off, usually you can get what you’re looking for on the first shot. But you’ve tossed those three times at least since I’ve gotten here.”

Keith’s nose wrinkles in disgust. “It gets harder around the equinox. And these aren’t the best stones in the first place, it’s amazing they work as well as they do.”

“Why? What makes them bad?”

“Not bad, just… less accurate. Bone would be better,” Keith says, scattering the shards across the table again and leaning forward to inspect the spread of them. “The magic still works with wood though.”  
  
Shiro picks one up, examining the hourglass shape carved into its surface. “What about bone makes it better? How is wood even similar enough to work at all? Why not actual stone?” Keith gives a good natured eye roll and snags the rune from Shiro’s hand, putting it back in place carefully.  
  
“Stone is dead, there’s no magic there to tap into so I’d have to charm them just to get them to work, and that’s a pain. The wood was alive at some point, which means there’s history there, and history has meaning. Bone would be even better because animals have spirits.” He picks up one of the runes, flipping it thoughtlessly between his fingers. “And blood. Blood magic is powerful, even when it’s dead.”

Shiro reaches for the same piece again before thinking better of it when Keith shoots him a look. He drops his hand instead, drumming his fingers on the table. “Why don’t you have a set made of bone then? You’ve been practicing for years, seems like something you would’ve gotten your hands on by now.”

“Believe me, I’ve tried.” Keith scoops all the shards up, cradling them in both hands, running his thumb across the surface of the one on top of the pile. “It’s not easy to find a complete skeleton big enough to have the pieces I need, but small enough to move without being suspicious.” He looks at them for a long moment, tumbling them back and forth between his palms before abruptly reaching for the bag he stores them in and turning his full attention back to Shiro as he tucks them away. “Anyway, how are your rounds going? Has anyone found any new caves lately?” Shiro lets himself be distracted, launching into a retelling of how one of the others managed to flip their bike, but the conversation lingers in the back of his mind, and he carefully files it away as something to think about later.

Later actually comes a lot sooner than he had been expecting, only a few weeks after the day he found Keith casting. Keith’s words seep back into the forefront of his mind during a training run just outside Garrison property. He’d pulled his bike to a stop in the shadow of a bolder, intending to switch his first battery out for the spare strapped to the back when he sees it: the top of a small skull half buried in the sand at his feet, bleached a forebodingly clean white by the sun. It only takes a moment to shift the sand enough to reveal the rest of the skeleton and before he knows it he’s pulling a sample bag out of his field kit and scooping the bones into it, picking around to make sure he’s got all of them. He’s just settling the bag at the bottom of his bike’s storage compartment when the radio sputters to life and nearly gives him a heart attack.

“Everything okay Shirogane? You’ve been stationary for ten minutes. Do you need someone to come get you?” He jerks towards the panel, jabbing the call button and very carefully not thinking about how he just picked up an animal skeleton with no hesitation because of something Keith mentioned off handedly a month ago.

“Just changing my battery. Had to clean out the contacts before hooking up the new one.”

“Copy that. Everyone else is headed back, so go ahead turn around as soon as you finish up.” Shiro clicks off his end of the connection and quickly switches out the battery, climbing on his bike and turning back towards the Garrison.

He spends the whole ride back wondering how he’s gonna get the skeleton to his room, but he doesn’t once regret picking it up.

He eventually does manage to smuggle the damn thing back to his room in a backpack, but only after it spends a few days in his locker first. It’s a Thursday, and that means Keith won’t be by until he finishes up his sim runs for the week. It gives Shiro just enough time to stuff the thing in one of the cabinets and plan out what he’s going to say before the sound of keys in the lock echoes through the apartment. Shiro’s still standing frozen at the kitchen table when Keith walks in, raising a single eyebrow at him in suspicion as he drops his bag by the door. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

Keith’s turning his head back and forth, leaning forward to look around the corner into the living room like whatever is bothering Shiro is just out of view. It takes a moment, but he does manage to shake himself out of his stupor to answer Keith. “Yeah. Yeah, everything is fine. I just, um.” He scrubs a hand across the back of his neck. “I got you something? But I don’t know if you’ll like it.” He gestures for Keith to take a seat, which he does, slowly and with a mildly concerned look on his face.

“Are you sure you’re okay Shiro? You’re acting really weird.” Shiro turns around, opening the cabinet he’d stuffed the skeleton in earlier and trying not to let his hands shake.

“Yeah. I’m good.” He turns, bag in hand, and lays it gently on the table in front of Keith, carefully avoiding eye contact all the while. “I found this while I was on patrol the other day and I remembered what you said.” It’s completely silent for a solid fifteen seconds before Keith is lifting a hand and running his fingers across the plastic of the sample bag, barely making contact, like he’s afraid touching it too hard will make it disappear.

“Is this…?” Keith’s voice is shaky when he finally speaks, and he hasn’t even finished his sentence before Shiro nods, turning his head to look at the wall so that he doesn’t have to meet Keith’s eyes.

“A coyote, I think. I found it when I stopped to switch batteries and I remembered what you said about bone. I figured even if it wasn’t good for rune stones you’d be able to use it for something else.” He shrugs, and tries not to feel like he’s about to melt through the floor.

Keith stands slowly, and Shiro watches him step around the table in the edge of his vision. He braces himself...

...and still nearly falls over when Keith throws his arms around his neck in the most enthusiastic hug he’s ever gotten.

“Shiro it’s perfect! This is exactly what I need!” Keith pulls back to look at him, still hanging off his neck. He’s got that twinkle in his eye that Shiro loves, and suddenly he finds himself wishing that his magic could influence his perception of time outside of fights, because he wants so badly to stay in this moment forever.

  
A few minutes later Keith is back in his chair at the table, bones scattered across its surface as he carefully selects a piece for each individual rune. “You know,” he begins, speaking casually like he’s not about to wreck Shiro’s world. “as far as courting gifts go this isn’t terrible.” Over by the counter Shiro chokes on the tea he’s been sipping in his rush to reply.  
  
“It’s not- well it is, but I mean, you don’t- I just-,” He breaks off, scrubbing a hand over his face and taking a deep breath. “It is. But I wasn’t sure if you wanted it to be, so I didn’t want to bring it up just in case. I didn’t want you to feel obligated-”  
  
Keith rolls his eyes and cuts him off with a huff even though there’s a smile on his face telling Shiro he doesn’t mean it. “Shiro. You brought me a dead animal. Of course it’s a courting gift. And of course I wanted it to be. And of course I’ll accept it without feeling obligated to.” He pauses to give Shiro a look. “When have you ever known me to do something I didn’t want to?” Keith sets down the shard he’s working on and beckons Shiro over, pulling his old set of runes out. “You’ve been teaching me your craft, I figure it’s only fair that you learn mine.” He places the bag in Shiro’s palm, wrapping his fingers around it and planting a kiss on his cheek. “It would be an honor to court you, Takashi Shirogane.”

“Okay, we’ll start simple.” Keith holds up a deck of tarot cards. “These are the first thing I ever learned to cast with, so I figure you shouldn’t have too hard a time with them.” He leans forward, laying the deck face down on the table and spreading them into a delicate arc with one smooth swipe of his hand. “The hardest thing to get right with tarot cards is the intent. You have to know what you want, and then you have to be able to tell the cards that.”

“Yeah, but it comes natural to you. How do you know I’ll be able to do it?” Shiro leans back on his hands, watching as Keith slides his finger under the card on the end and flicks it up, causing the entire row to turn over in sequence. “I definitely won’t be able to do that.”

Keith shoots him a smug look and repeats the motion on the opposite side so that all the cards are face down once again. “This is just a flourish to keep people interested, it has nothing to do with the actual magic you dork. And you should be able to bend your magic enough to do this. I mean, I learned how to fight, didn’t I?”

Shiro fixes his face into the most serious expression he can manage. “Keith. You’re an orphan.” There’s a moment of silence before they’re both snorting, and Shiro watches Keith try to restrain shrieks of laughter that very nearly have him in tears. They carry on like that for a few minutes, unable to look at each other without a relapse of giggles, before Shiro finally manages to get himself under control. “Okay, okay. Show me what I need to do.”

Keith sits back up, scooting back up to their table and scooping the line of cards back into his hand. “First you need to shuffle them.”

Shiro accepts the pile and starts shuffling, his fingers clumsy and unused to the motion. He nearly drops them a few times, and very pointedly does not look at Keith as he works through the pile. “You’re doing great Shiro. Now, just focus on me. Keep going until you feel like you’ve got the right card on top, then stop.”

Shiro winces as one of the cards nearly goes flying out of his hand, but he manages to scoot it back into the pile before it can escape completely. “What do you mean, feel the right card?”

He can see Keith laughing at him out of the corner of his eye, practically sitting on his hands in order to keep from reaching over to fix the way Shiro no doubt has his fingers in all the wrong places. “Exactly what it sounds like I’m saying. Now pay attention, if you drop those you’re picking them all up.”

Shiro rolls his eyes and speeds up, feeling a little better now that he’s gone a few flips in a row without nearly losing any. “I’m not gonna drop-”

His hands stop moving, almost without his permission, and the card on top of the pile goes shooting across the surface of the table, slowing to a stop right in front of Keith, who raises a single elegant eyebrow and picks it up between two fingers. “Not gonna drop one, hmm?”

Shiro reaches out to try to snag the card back but Keith darts backwards as well. “Nope! This is the one.”

Shiro makes a noise that sounds way too much like a whine to have come from someone his size and slumps back into his seat, “C’mon Keith, no it’s not. I just dropped it.”

“Yes. But it would have been on top. Now let’s see what we’ve got here.”

He turns the card over to reveal a simplistic image of a woman seated on a throne, a bright crown settled on her hair as she brandishes a gleaming sword. “Oh. Nice one Shiro.”

He leans forward to take a closer look at the card. The light plays across it, and the metallic ink that he hadn’t noticed before gleams in the light that streams through the window. “What does that mean? Is it good?”

Keith snorts again, his nose curling up into an adorable wrinkle, and sets the card face up on the table. “You’re gonna laugh.”

Shiro shifts, crawling around the table to settle next to Keith and crowd into his space, smacking an obnoxious kiss onto his cheek. “I wouldn’t laugh at you baby!”

Keith looks up, doubt painted on his face. Shiro wiggles his eyebrows at him, just because he can. Keith sighs, nudging at the card with his nail. “It’s the Queen of Swords. Upright it means independence and quick thinking.” He shoots another look at Shiro before continuing. “But when it’s inverted it symbolizes being overly emotional or impulsive.”

Shiro does manage to keep himself from laughing, but there’s nothing he can do about the way his entire body jerks in surprise. Keith is pulling away from him instantly, getting his legs under himself so he can bolt. Luckily Shiro is fast enough to lurch into him, pinning Keith to the front of the couch with a shoulder pressed into the middle of his chest. “Nooooo!” Keith wiggles out of the hold, stumbling to his feet and leaving Shiro to tip onto the carpet and look up at his boyfriend pitifully. “Don’t leave!”

Keith crosses his arms, looking down at him and tapping his foot the way he always does when he’s indulging Shiro. “You said you wouldn’t laugh.” Shiro blinks up at him, trying to look innocent, but Keith just rolls his eyes and settles back onto the floor, reaching to run a hand through Shiro’s hair. “You’re insufferable. And you have terrible puppy dog eyes.”

Shiro hums, nudging into the hand happily as he settles down, content to fall asleep to the sound of Keith shuffling his deck quietly overhead. Around them the light from the window slowly fades, darkness draping their surroundings until their edges blend together in the shadows, tangled together irrevocably.

In his chest his magic swishes about in gently muted joy, and he doesn’t have to nudge at it to understand what it’s saying. _Home?_ Shiro turns to push his nose into Keith’s sweatshirt covered stomach and a moment later an elegant finger traces the shell of his ear affectionately, lingering on the turn of his jaw before returning to its task. He hums an affirmative. _Home._

They’re about ten minutes into one of their weekly sparring sessions when Keith finally manages to come out on top for the first time. It’s unexpected to say the least, one moment they’re flowing around each other in their usual back and forth rhythm, and the next thing Shiro knows is that Keith is smirking and his back is hitting the mat. He spends a moment laying there completely stunned before what’s happened has even registered. “Did you just-” he takes a deep breath and tries to force down the blush he can feel rising. “Did you just thigh choke me?”

Keith nods from his current position, perched over Shiro’s chest with cheeks that are flushed red and a savage grin painted across his face. The sparkle is back in his eyes, and that means that even though there are about six different ways Shiro could get out of the loose hold Keith’s got on him he’s perfectly happy where he is, knocked breathless by something much better than the ground underneath them. Keith sucks in another deep breath through his teeth, unable to wipe the smile off his face. “Good move?”

All Shiro can do is nod, bringing his hands up to rub thumbs against Keith’s hip bones as he replays the past few seconds of their fight in his mind, trying to figure out who Keith could have learned this particular take down from. “Show me again?”

Keith laughs, tosses his head back and lets loose a cackle that shakes his whole body. Shiro takes the opportunity to roll them over, trapping Keith beneath him and flopping down, using his full weight to pin his much smaller boyfriend to the ground. “Shiro! Let me up!”

“Nope. You’re mine now.” It slips out without thought, but something about what he’s said has Keith freezing underneath him, going still so suddenly that for a moment Shiro’s afraid he’s accidentally crushed him. “Keith?”

He pushes up onto his elbows, and when he looks down he finds Keith staring up at him with a look on his face that makes Shiro want to wrap him up in a blanket and tuck him away where the world can’t ever hurt him again. He looks delicate in a way he never does, and that’s before he reaches up with a trembling hand to brush back the bangs that are sticking to Shiro’s forehead. He opens his mouth to say something and then stops, pulling his hand back like he’s afraid to get burned. So Shiro leans to one side carefully, bracing himself on one arm, and then uses his free hand to snag Keith’s, bringing it to his lips and pressing a kiss to his palm. “What’s wrong baby?”

The endearment knocks something loose, because Keith is raising his other hand, cradling Shiro’s face between them and pulling him down to knock their foreheads together. “Promise?” His eyes are closed, and both of them are covered in sweat and sprawled across the floor in the middle of the gym where anyone can walk in and see them, but this can’t wait. Right now the best thing that’s ever happened to Shiro is laying beneath him, and his immediate priority is to make sure that Keith knows that.

“Of course.” He rubs his nose against Keith’s and pulls his elbows closer together so that when he opens his eyes Shiro will be the only thing Keith will see. “Of course I promise baby.” He takes a moment, considers whether this is the time to finally say the thing that’s been drifting through his thoughts since the very first night they spent on the roof, when Keith told Shiro the stars were calling while Shiro could only think about trapping the moment in his mind like a picture; then he decides that it’s been far too long already. “I love you.”

Keith’s eyes snap open again, and just like Shiro intended, he’s the only thing Keith sees. There are tears forming in the corners of his eyes, but they don’t fall. Instead a blinding smile seeps across his face, and just like that, it’s Shiro who’s gone and fallen all over again. “I love you too.”

There’s a pause, and then Shiro lets his arms slip out from under him and drops back onto Keith, forcing another squeak out of him. “I love you more baby!” He starts smacking wet kisses across all the parts of Keith’s face that he can reach, using his weight to keep him from escaping. They spend a few minutes like that, tussling around on the floor as Keith shrieks and tries to squirm out of Shiro’s grip.

Of course, that’s when Matt walks in.

“OH COME ON!” His exaggerated groans of disgust are quickly drowned out by the laughter filling the room. He joins in soon enough anyway, the three of them hanging out and goofing off together the way they rarely have a chance to until the ten minute curfew warning kicks on and they have to scramble to get back to Shiro’s room before they get a demerit.

Shiro holds Keith’s hand the whole way there.

  
They’re spending another night together out in the canyon, sitting in the sand with their backs against the bike and looking up at the stars when Keith jerks excitedly and points up at the sky. “Those ones, right there.” Above their heads six stars flare a bit brighter for a split second, and if Shiro hadn’t known that Keith was the cause he’d have thought he’d imagined it.  
  
“What about them?”  
  
Keith rolls his head to look up at Shiro and he feels all the breathe in his body escape without warning. Keith’s eyes are always beautiful, a vivid shade of purple that Shiro’s never seen before, but right now they’re filled with stars and lit from within as Keith’s magic floats freely through the air. “Everyone has stars Shiro. Those are yours.”  
  
He reaches a hand out to tuck a stray lock of hair behind Keith’s ear. “Which ones are yours?”  
  
Keith’s eyes flick back up to the sky, and Shiro follows his gaze, smiling when another seven stars glow briefly, and he’s not at all surprised when they’re the ones that float in the spaces between his, linking all thirteen together in an unnamed constellation.  
  
Shiro smiles and looks back to Keith. “Guess you’re stuck with me, huh?” Keith finally tips his head back down, tearing his gaze from the sky to meet Shiro’s with a wild grin.  
  
“As if I’d ever let you go.”

They spend the rest of the night like that, tucked against and around each other until the sky starts to get brighter around the edges, and just before Keith climbs onto his bike to take them back to their real lives Shiro reaches out, pulls him close and runs a thumb across the soft skin of his cheek. “One of these days,” he says, and very carefully does not think of the paperwork he submitted yesterday morning, “I’m going to bring you the stars.”

Keith just smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners, and reaches up to brush delicate fingers across Shiro’s cheek. “I know you will.” The love in his voice is heartbreaking, and there’s absolutely nothing else for Shiro to do but kiss him as the light of the rising sun washes across them and the desert.

Keith is sitting in his room finishing up a flight plan for homework the day Shiro comes bursting in unannounced, looking frazzled and heading straight for him with wild eyes and papers clutched in his fist. “Shiro, what-” He’s cut off when Shiro tosses the papers to the side and scoops him up into the air, spinning around and laughing like a madman the entire time. “Shiro! What the hell are you doing? What has gotten into you?” Shiro looks up at him with an adoration in his eyes that still sends Keith’s stomach for a loop whenever he’s confronted with it.

“I got the mission baby! I’m going to Kerberos!”

Keith doesn’t even hesitate, just throws his arms around Shiro’s shoulders and starts laughing along with him, letting his boyfriend hold him off the ground for a few more seconds before he wiggles out of his arms, reaching up to get a hand on the back of his brilliant boyfriend’s neck so he can kiss him. “Of course you did! They would have been idiots to give it to anyone else!” He bends down to collect the papers that Shiro had tossed aside during his grand entrance and flips through them, finding an acceptance letter and a basic outline of the plan for the mission.

“Do you know when you start mission prep?” Shiro’s face lights up again as he launches into an explanation of everything he’s been told so far and suddenly Keith’s stomach sinks even as he attempts to hold his face steady.

“What’s wrong baby?” Keith shakes himself out of his stupor to see Shiro’s worried face, and he forces a grin. It isn’t hard, Shiro is practically vibrating with excitement, and Keith’s always been fine tuned to his emotions.

“Nothing. I’m so proud of you.” He goes in for another hug but gets stopped by a hand on his shoulder and a stern look from his boyfriend.

“Keith, you can tell me what’s bothering you babe. I won’t be upset.” Keith huffs and reaches up, plucking Shiro’s hand off of his shoulder and repositioning it to press a kiss to his palm.

“I really am proud of you. But I’m gonna miss you so much.” Understanding plays its way across Shiro’s face and then he’s using the hand on Keith’s cheek to pull him in and tap their foreheads together.

“I’m gonna miss you too, baby. So, so, much. But you know what?” He pauses, waiting for Keith to open his eyes and look at him before he continues. “I’m gonna be back before you know it.” He raises his other hand, frames Keith’s face and keeps him from looking anywhere else, as if he could ever want to when almost his entire world is wrapped up in the man in front of him. “I promised you the stars, baby, and I plan to deliver.”

Keith can feel his eyes watering, so he pushes forward out of Shiro’s grasp to set his temple against the collarbone in front of him, hiding happy tears in his boyfriend’s neck. “You’d better.”

Shiro wraps his arms around Keith, curving his much larger frame around the body clinging to him. “I will. Don’t you ever doubt that I will. Don’t you ever think that I won’t be coming back to you.” Shiro picks him back up then, maneuvering both of them onto the bed and holding Keith close while he tells him all about the ship he’ll be flying and the simulations the tech department promised to have ready in the next two weeks.

Keith falls asleep like that, warm and loved and safe, and dreams of shades of purple that don’t exist on the planet Earth.

He doesn’t remember them when he wakes up, and for the rest of the day the stars are suspiciously silent.

Shiro is about a month into the intense training regimen involved with flying a mission into the vast recesses of space when he drops himself dramatically across Keith’s lap, sprawling across him where he’s sitting on the couch reading through one of the manuals detailing the advanced new systems of the shuttle Shiro will be flying. “I’m dying Keith! They’re killing me!”

Keith rolls his eyes but doesn’t put down his tablet, reaching instead to run the fingers of his free hand through Shiro’s close cropped hair. “No they’re not, you’re just dramatic.” A thought occurs to him and he smirks, glad Shiro can’t see his face so he’ll get the full benefit of this surprise. “You kind of sound like Matt.”

The effect is immediate. Shiro shoves himself off of Keith’s lap with a look of betrayal on his face, but promptly loses his balance and falls to the floor. Keith’s laughter rings out across the apartment, interrupted several times by indignant splutters and exclamations before Shiro gives up and starts laughing too.

Keith finally sets aside his tablet, wiping tears from his eyes and reaching out for Shiro where he’s sprawled across the floor at the foot of the couch. “What am I gonna do without you?”

Shiro looks up to him with a face flushed from laughter and reaches for his hand, pulling Keith down on top of him instead of joining him on the couch. “Eat cafeteria mac and cheese a lot less often?”

Keith settles into his perch atop Shiro and takes the opportunity to flick him lightly on the nose. “Thank god.”

“Hey!” Shiro’s pout is cut off when Keith scoots close enough to give him a peck on the lips before snuggling into his chest and settling down, considering the benefits of a quick nap.

“Look,” he tips his head up just enough to make eye contact with his body pillow. “I love you Shiro, more than anything, but that stuff is nasty and you are the only one that likes it.”

“Matt likes it!” Shiro’s attempted defense starts out confident but fades into uncertainty in the face of Keith’s smirk.

“Matt pretends to like it and then dumps his bowl in yours when you’re not looking. Matt’s nicer than I am.” Shiro blinks in surprise.

“Oh. That makes sense actually.” There’s complete silence for a few moments as they lay there, just existing with each other. Then Keith sees his bag sitting a few feet away at the end of the couch and an idea catches him off guard. He turns it over in his mind a few times before figuring that it can’t hurt to ask.

“Before you leave, can you do something for me?” Shiro shifts under him, nudging him over until he falls onto the floor and Shiro can roll on top of him, pushing his head into Keith’s hand until he gets the message and starts petting his hair again.

“Of course I can. What is it?” Keith shifts his hand to cradle Shiro’s jaw and tips his chin up so he can look him in the eye.

“Read my fortune?” Shiro’s eyes get wide and he pushes up onto his elbows so he can look at Keith properly.

“What brought this on?” The angle he’s propped himself up at puts his head right between Keith and the window, haloing Shiro in golden light and turning him into something resplendent. Keith reaches up and pushes Shiro’s floof back the way he always does when he feels the ever-present loneliness stirring in his chest.

“I just want to see how I’ll be without you.” Shiro leans downs and tucks his head into the crook of Keith’s neck, doing nothing to dissuade Keith’s petting.

“You’re going to be fine. You’re going to be amazing.”

Keith sighs quietly, nothing but a faint push of air through his nose. “I know. I know I will. But I still want to check. And I can’t do it without you.”

Shiro stills against him, and Keith can tell he’s thinking it over, weighing the pros of practicing what Keith's been teaching him against what he might see. There’s a quiet huff pressed into his throat where Shiro’s breath has warmed the exposed patch of skin, followed by a whisper so soft Keith barely hears it even in the dead silence of Shiro’s otherwise empty apartment. “Okay.”

Keith gently pushes Shiro off of him, crawling over to his bag and retrieving an old and well loved deck from one of the pockets. “These were my dad’s. I don’t use them as much anymore because I have my own, but there’s still some residual magic in there that you should be able to work with.” He settles back down on the floor across the coffee table from Shiro and leans forward onto his elbows, letting his hair fall into his face just because he knows Shiro will reach over and tuck it behind his ear for him. He does, and Keith smiles. “Now come on magic man. Read me a fortune.”

Shiro smiles back at him, picks up the deck, and starts shuffling.

  
At the launch, just before he has to go, Shiro presses a kiss to Keith’s forehead that has Keith looking up at him with a gentle smile, brushing Shiro’s forelock back from his face and cradling his jaw with the hand not already wrapped up in his. “Did you pack your runes? Your cards?”  
  
Shiro snorts, tugging him into a tight hug and tucking Keith’s head under his chin, rocking both of them side to side with a happy hum. “Of course. Have you heard anything I’m allowed to know about, or is it all spoilers?” He feels Keith tense against him as he lets his magic take control, but it passes in seconds, and then Keith is pulling back with a smile spreading across his face. “Good news?”  
  
“Just one word.” Keith leans in, and Shiro has to force his attention away from the way Keith’s eyes crinkle at the edges when he smiles.

“The stars are calling you _Champion_.”

  
  
Months later there are tarot cards scattered across the floor of the shack and empty mugs littering the counter as tea leaf dregs dry into their bottoms. At the center of the table there is a leather bag of wooden rune chips, sitting innocently and impossibly 4.67 million miles away from where they should be in the crate at the foot of Shiro’s bunk.  
  
Keith spends the night screaming at the cold and distant stars, tearing with his magic at a silent sky that only repeats one word over and over and over again until Keith doesn’t recognize it anymore.  
  
_ChampionChampionChampionChampionChampionChampionChamp-_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!! Comments give me great ideas for sequels and subscriptions motivate me to hurry up and finish chapter two! I hope you enjoyed!!


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